DN1982

The individual ingredients of this creation are all on my I Like list and yet this fragrance surprises me with its fabulous balance. Coniferous wood extracts of all kinds are sometimes equated with granny's spruce needle foam bath from the four-litre bottle or Franzen's brandy - and we are dealing with these extracts three times. Nah, leave the head cinema aside as grandma tips two full caps from the spruce needle foam bath into the tub and after the bath rubs the rotten knees with Franzen's brandy.

There's quality to this. You have the needles and the resin in your hand, you grind it, throw it into the air, let your arms circle and smell your hands - pure ethereal. BVpH gives you a lot of it, but he doesn't kill you with it, because he gives you the freshness of bergamot. Sage and pimento add the spice, rounded off by the balsamic and sweet Labdanum. The allspice is also rather sweetly aromatic, but here I don't care which of the two is the sweeter part, they don't take anything, they just play together perfectly, which by the way also applies to the base notes. The fragrance is round, there is nothing disturbing, there is nothing annoying, there is no restlessness
Unfortunately the range and durability is a little bit missing

When I smell BVpH, this fragrance inevitably takes me back to the 1980s. The scene is set in Italy, early autumn. It is no longer oppressively hot, it is sunny and mild and the air already smells slightly of autumn. I see an Italian businessman, atypically tall at about 1.95 metres. Very slim, lean figure, a kind of aviator glasses from the design department of a German sports car manufacturer; dressed in a black-brown suit, of course custom-made. The frame of his sunglasses shines with his also custom-made shoes, while leaning sideways against the B-pillar of his W126 280E, painted in silver thistle metallic, he is talking to the car phone. A gentleman. Not arrogant, but somehow aloof. Radiating calm and sovereignty, a man with style and taste.

Then I see that this fragrance is not that old and does not have 10 Lenze on its back! I beg your pardon? And yet it is so classic, so old schoolig elegant, that nobody would place it in the here and now. Someone has managed to make a fragrant statement. I seem to have found my way back on the right track - there are still some good things to discover off the mainstream that were not released at least 25 years ago. Only one thing seems to be due to the current zeitgeist: the lack of reach and durability. After all, it doesn't disappear quite as abruptly as a tall, gaunt businessman from the neighborhood at the end of the 1980s, who happened to come from Southern Europe, always and always wore a suit, had a weakness for good scents, drove a silver thistle metallic-colored W126, and was in a terrible hurry when the German tax investigation was breathing down his neck...

The scent already caught my attention in a very positive way with my great uncle who died many years ago. Also because as a child I somehow always had the thought that good fragrances are actually more a domain of women

So at the age of ten or eleven, in 1986 or '87, we were visiting my great uncle and were just getting ready to go home, he said to me: "Wait a minute, I have something for you."

Game? Tension? Chocolate? Well, he was always very frugal with that sort of thing. And now he goes into the bathroom. What could he bring from there? His squeaky duck, perhaps?
Far from it. He held a small flat black box with the writing Drakkar Noir in his hand. With a smile on his face he opened the small box with his fingers and pulled out a small glass bottle. He pulled the lid off the vial, which had a long thin plastic strip on it, stroked me along with the strip behind my left ear, dipped it back into the vial, and repeated the whole thing behind my right ear. Then he put the lid back on, put the small bottle back in the box, closed it and put it in my hand.
That's a fine thing, just right for a fine fellow like you, he said with a mild, thoroughly honest smile in his eyes

And already the olfactory delight unfolded! And that at this low dose of maybe a tenth of a milliliter - I was baff!
I cherished this specimen, using the fragrance exclusively for larger family celebrations.
Eventually, the sample ran out. I kept the empty specimen for a while and in the meantime tried all kinds of (shaving) waters, many of which were good, but not nearly as good as Drakkar Noir.

One day I was leafing through a magazine and found advertisements for Drakkar Noir. Drakkar Noir? That name mean anything to you?
What was even nicer, there was a small card with a scent sample stuck on the advertisement.
Ripped open, nose in, and there it was again, the dragon boat. So I picked up some money and went to get a bottle of that scented bomb. There it was again, this olfactory delight, which brought me one compliment after the other and at times I could hardly save myself from inquiries about what kind of perfume I was wearing. Mind you, it was the beginning of the nineties, when Drakkar Noir was supposedly in everyone's nose, the best-selling men's EdT etc.; but nobody except my great uncle wore it, which amazes me to this day

Drakkar Noir was really suitable for every occasion and also when the better is the enemy of the good: Never chance a running system! Especially if it suits you perfectly right from the start and doesn't have to be smelled better by tens of times trying it. Over the years I have kept some fragrances through and also in my repertoire, but the permanent staff includes DN!

In the end, it was lucky for everyone involved that my great-uncle was one of the last wounded to be flown out of the Stalingrad cauldron and thus survived the Second World War in southern France, where he met a Frenchwoman who was born with a love of good scents. Otherwise I would probably never have ended up with this bombastic scent, which was so formative. Posthumously again many thanks for it

At some point, however, it must have been around 2000, this classic must have been slightly changed for the first time. At the same time, it was no longer Cosmair printed on the back of the bottle of the coveted fabric, but LLC. I still had the old one and could compare both versions directly against each other or have them compared. The spray head was changed as well, it got smaller and does not stick out as much as the old one

The juice didn't necessarily get worse, it became a bit milder and more base note-heavy or heart and base notes appear earlier (which I liked quite well), but with the exception of the leather note, which was perfectly tuned before and unfortunately is no longer there this year.
However, this reformulation was at the expense of durability! He still packs his 5-6 hours. But if you know that Drakkar Noir was about twice as strong in the original version and the sillage was a whole lot stronger, you might be a bit disappointed. Especially since two sprays were once the absolute maximum dosage, where it now needs double.

Around 2009, I suddenly found myself enjoying flacons with the inscription Cosmair, which, according to the seller, were supposed to be from current production and came close to the original in terms of fragrance and durability. An inquiry with Guy Laroche, who is now the current (!) distributor of Drakkar Noir, was never answered. Since I have been smelling good for years and had to ask this unpleasant question to other manufacturers as well, I could quickly make the observation that I never (!) received an answer. Why only, if they don't have any dirt or IFRA on them?

However, the seller from whom I bought a bottle from Cosmair times in 2009 swindled me! DN was all and I ordered from another shop. What did I get? One from LLC from 2010!!! What does that tell us? Fresh goods still only come from LLC - until today! Since all other lovers of good fragrances buy everything old and unreformulated from under your nose, the chances of getting old new goods have now dropped to zero. Opened flacons or ancient miniatures via Ebay excluded.

Now it's the year 2020 and again DN smells different than my last 2013 badge! The spray head has been changed again, now it is the old bigger one from years ago. Of course the label on the bottle has been redesigned a little bit. After several adjustments I can say with certainty that between 2000 and 2020 DN was operated on three times - more questions?
Interestingly enough, DN is now coming back to its former, full-bodied self. Not like the original from the 1980s, but closer to it than what was thrown on the market 10 years ago. They seem to have found an adequate replacement for oakmoss. Even the zero in leather that DN's friends had to put up with has given way to at least a barely audible +0.1 in leather.
Peace, joy, DN? No! Even though the overall composition is rounder in itself, the makers have now taken away any form of reach from the good boy. No matter how much reformulation has been done on him - if the bottle is empty, I will buy more after 4 weeks at the latest without DN, because I am missing something else. My current 2020 badge (100 ml) is half empty after 6 weeks of daily use, I refill it at least twice a day with at least 6 sprayers each. I never had such an immense wear and tear! As soon as it is there, it is already gone! The scent is still great, but those who don't know it until today should leave it at this status quo, it is just frustration! It's sad that I have to say this, but let's take it off the market

Actually, what I have chosen as a headline would be enough. The haircutting notice says it all.

But let's do it a little differently here:
Where does one the classic safari take place? Somewhere in Africa, with the Landy through steppes, deserts and savannahs. Nice weather, right? Yes, but damn hot! And if you could hold your feet in a water hole to cool down, it's either teeming with crocodiles or billions of mosquitoes.

Let's summarize: it's damn hot, you sweat like a pig, you stink like one, and the vermin eat you up too. But there's a cure for that: Safari for men. You don't have to enrich the air in the changing room with excessive use of spray cans to a breathtaking and explosive mixture like the youth after school sports. From Ralph's good work, two presses of the spray head three times are enough to achieve a similarly slapping effect - without the risk of explosion. Yes, that's what you need on a sudorific safari - the sheer overdose of citrus, greenery and, to make it less boring, a big bouquet of flowers. Anything even remotely reminiscent of body odour has to go - and it will undoubtedly do so. Nah, the prelude is really borderline and was already in '92 no longer considered contemporary.
Thank goodness the boy becomes a little more suitable for everyday use towards the base, and changes to a strikingly classic men's fragrance, specialising in scissors, knives and leather. And isn't it said that cedar oil should keep away mosquitoes? Then it would be the perfect wonder weapon in the African outback. But I remember tests where cedar oil was tested as unsuitable against mosquitoes. Well then, maybe it will protect you from game in case you forgot your hunting rifle in the plane.
After all: the caraway seeds are missing! With caraway seeds, the old men in their Landy would not be able to stop in time in front of the shop window of Alfred's hairdresser's shop.

Yes, I admit it, I used it a few times as a youth sin after its appearance, when the grandpas of today were still the old geezers of (over)tomorrow. Ok, sometimes you wanted to appear a bit more mature and older and what the girls did with make-up, the boys liked to do with distinctive scents. But I had already noticed two or three years before that there were scents that not only made you look more mature but also brought compliments. It could also be a compliment if she said to you, "Hey, my daddy likes to use that, too" and there was an honest smile on her face, something familiar.
You see, there are always different views and approaches and points of view and it would certainly be boring if this were not the case.

Once you have taken the trouble to unfrench the name of this brilliant fragrance, it will indicate a clear direction.

But is he really so natural, so down-to-earth and earthy? Or is there something else, not less fascinating, hidden in it? Well, the prelude is quite a good start - yes, this is not going to be a powerhouse...? Yes, that there is something like that, that I can still experience something like that - without a million deadly roses!
According to the Hermes, it has a citrusy, resinous freshness that I like immediately. He is also a bit rough, yes Suavage - and not only on paper! - and I think that's how it should be and this restlessness doesn't bother me. On the contrary - here it is a joy to see or smell how the fragrances are fighting a real street battle for supremacy and nobody, but really nobody, can take the sceptre in his hand permanently: Even if the Harz seems to easily gain the upper hand, there are still the citrus fruits that want to buy the edge from the Harz. The flint stone of course doesn't like that at all and adds its gangrenous-tart note, which at the same time wants to be overpowered by the no less tart rose geranium leaf.

And it is precisely this interplay of this variety of nature-known scents, which are very opposite in their origin, that makes the fragrance something different - something TOTALLY OTHER: yes, there are nature-known scents, but they all go in a direction that is not natural, but has technical origins. There's not just a flare-up of the medical adhesive plaster note that characterized the original version (!) of YSL's M7.
There is even more technical stuff: the term sheathed cable NYM will certainly not be a foreign word to the electrician. In addition to their own insulation, the individual conductors are sheathed with a soft, crumbly plastic, which in turn is enclosed by the outer insulation. And it is precisely this soft, crumbly plastic that smells very similar to TdH.
Another plastic, it would have to be polycarbonate - but I'm not 100% sure - develops quite a strong, slightly burnt smell when you bend it back and forth several times beyond its elastic deformability - TdH has that in it, too, but much less concisely than the soft crumbling plastic in the NYM line, whose composition is unknown to me. So rather power cable-heavy, the good one.
For those who find these technical smells rather unpleasant, I may nevertheless calm them down, because TdH puts its citric freshness over it.
I go even further: the wet asphalt, which was added to the vetiver flanker of TdH by a commentator - but which is not to be found there or only with the greatest nose-optimism, is much easier to spot in Original - benzoin, flint and rose geranium leaf are the magic words here!

When he dims down, vetiver and patchouli push themselves forward. Actually, not really, because they're in the party pretty early on, uh. Now the technical, even a little coolness steps back a little and now the lad does justice to his earthy hint. The cedar fiddles very discreetly in the background and I can't really nose out the two peppercorns either. What is not wrong with the hot grains but not at all - too many fragrances become musty by pepper, one-dimensional and thus annoying and boring, while the pink variant is still the best of all the peppers. Here, however, as already mentioned, you hardly hear anything, but only as an adhesive, a filler and vehicle for the other components that make up this fragrance.

If you like it resinous and like the sauvage... Or even better: if you like it even more resinous and like the Sauvage-like extremes of La Rive even more, but want it dirtier in the sense of earthier, cooler and simply more technical, you should definitely keep your nose in here - it could be worth it.

TdH manages several splits. It offers an abundance of opposing scent components of natural origin, which at first glance do not necessarily want to harmonise with each other, but do so nevertheless. At the same time, this composition spans the bow to odours from the technical field without losing its "grounding". And then TdH also has something classic about it. Ellena didn't draw a bow with this fragrance, it created a circle with the potential to become a classic - if it isn't already.
I'm not fooling myself - TdH is a horny technician who has what it takes to sign. It was Drakkar Noir in the late 1980s that led me into the world of fragrances, and my love of the smell of leather, which I had had since my earliest childhood, continued to inspire me and thus shaped me accordingly. In the nineties it would have been Halston's Catalyst and in the 2000s M7 in its original version. In the 2010s it would have been O Boticarios Quasar Fire. Whereby: it would have fought for supremacy with the Quasar Onix from the same company, similar to the individual fragrance components of TdH. And today? I hardly dare to say it, but it would be TdH! Any questions?

Who doesn't know that when you're sitting like this at dinner. The meal isn't terrible, but you don't want to have any more and then you get that tortured smile and rejection. That's how I feel with this scent. Why? Well, it's just so popular: smelled over the past 10 years or more in the form of similar mainstream favourites a la One Million - exactly, the one with the legal dose of rose - and on the one hand estimated, but on the other hand something you don't want to have every day. Just like a toy a long time ago that would quickly become boring and end up in the corner.
The monotony of the scent contributes to the boredom here, the pyramid of scents leaves no doubt: here, however, it is not a lethal dose of roses, but the musty pepper on the back of its field nag called sage, which has just entered a vanilla bog, slowly sinking into it and no helper in sight far and wide. This spectacle, or drama in one act, lasts about 7-8 hours and does not wash off as well. So I fry myself a nice steak with lots of roasted onions on top and fry myself a portion of fries in the hope that these gourmand foreign notes will let a little grass grow over the badly washable

If you're still into that sort of thing, including those who have mocked the fact that a scent is badly rated just because it's sweet, I'll put a Halloween Man from Jesus Del Pozo to their hearts if they want to get really crazy. He is also suitable for sweet friends as a recognition that the better is the enemy of the good. And for something in-between, it's also worth a nose full of Wanted by Night.